Content-centric networking is one of the future internet paradigms that address the problems of existing TCP/IP networks. With regard to this, a network structure has been changed from IP-centric communication adopting an end-to-end manner to content name-centric communication adopting a broadcast manner. In addition, a content-centric networking router has the ability to cache chunks of content, whereby, when chunks requested by a client are stored in the content-centric networking router, unnecessary duplication of request packets in the network and overloading of requests to a server can be prevented by transferring the stored chunks.
For example, when a user requests content from Google and receives the content from Google through content-centric networking can be considered. In this case, when User 1 requests content from Google, the request can be transmitted to a Google server via routers H, D, B, and A connected to each other, and the content can be sent to User 1 in a reverse order of the transmitted route, i.e., via A, B, D, and H. In addition, the responsive content can be stored in the routers H, D, B, and A on the route. Subsequently, when another user requests the same content and any one of the routers H, D, B, and A has content requested by router D adjacent thereto, the requested content can be forwarded from any one of the routers H, D, B, and A to the adjacent router D without transmission of the request to the server.
Meanwhile, in existing TCP/IP networking, multipath connections are utilized to provide a highly efficient transmission rate because single-path connections cannot have a transmission rate exceeding a limited bandwidth. Multipath connections can also be utilized in content-centric networking, thereby obtaining efficient transmission and a high transmission rate. There is some research into utilizing multipath connections to receive content at the same time. When there are multiple content providers having the same content, an interest packet can be distributively transmitted to the content providers and content can be simultaneously received therefrom.
To accomplish an operation of distributively transmitting an interest packet, content of which is to be requested, to multiple content providers, content-centric networking routers should have a function of being capable of distributively transmitting an interest packet and a function of being capable of reassembling chunks of content received via different interfaces. In addition, problems can occur in the network because packets are accumulated in an area in which congestion easily occurs when all intermediate content-centric networking routers distributively transmit an interest packet and, accordingly, congestion further easily occurs.